1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to a system and method for interfacing with a data management system, and more particularly to a system and method configured to interface, transfer, format, and manage data between a user interface, such as a web page, and a data management system, such as a call center interface used by customer service representatives to manage customer data.
2. Background Art
Advances in technology have revolutionized the way companies do business. Not too long ago, when a customer called a company with an issue, the customer service representative had to retrieve a paper file prior to talking with the customer. With the advent of computers, customer service representatives became able to access files electronically. This electronic access made responding to customer issues more efficient.
As technology continued to advance, companies began to track more and more information. For example, rather than providing a customer service representative with basic customer information, such as name, address, and account number, companies found that customer service representatives could be more helpful with greater information. Many companies want to provide all of this information to customer service representatives when they address customer issues.
Managing all of this customer information in an efficient manner is cumbersome. Where there are many customer data fields, records, and files, intelligent organization and formatting of this information becomes essential. To address this need, application service providers began to develop data viewer applications. These applications facilitate the presentation of multiple-file data to a customer representative in a clean and efficient manner.
While such tools work well for this application, it is often difficult to customize these application specific tools to automated process. For example, many of these tools have specifically defined interfaces. Data must be entered and retrieved in a very specific manner, using tool-specific commands and rules. When data organization tools are paired with other automation tools, and the interfaces do not match, numerous problems occur, including corrupt or lost data, error messages, and incomplete data operations. One place where such problems occur is where business processes are developed outside the data management tool, including web-page interfaces.
There is thus a need for an interface tool for information handling systems that facilitates data entry and retrieval from the information handling system.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.